against the Lord and against his Anointed That is to say The Pope is Iesus Christ and all Christian Kings who maintain their Sovereignty against the Usurpations of Rome are the Herods and the Pontius Pilates This publick decry yet in the Books of these Writers is nothing so considerable as the particular and clandestine traverses that the Court of Rome excites upon all occasions whatsoever against those whom she believes not favourable to her Interests By that it is she stops the mouths and stays the Pens of almost all Learned persons who cannot really possess themselves of that Title that they are not inwardly persuaded of the Hypocrisies of these ambitious pretensions but they chuse rather to be silent then to speak of it Because there are but a very few persons so in love with Truth as in resolving to maintain it will endure to be tormented and barretted all their life-time and to be torn in pieces when they are dead They see that Kings and their great Ministers take not for the most part that care to protect those who maintain and defend their Right by some testimony of their acknowledging it as the Court of Rome does to persecute them or at least to deny them all kind of favour They must be touch'd with an extraordinary Zeal and very disinteress'd to surmount all these considerations and to sacrifice themselves for the Interest of their Prince and Countrey without any hope of advantage or to speak more properly with reason to apprehend all sort of disadvantage by it All those principally who are ty'd to any Community are thereby oblig'd to a silence which they believe to be just as holding themselves responsable for the conservation of their Body And 't is true these vast Bodies have stricter bonds which tie them to Rome and are more expos'd to Persecution because they have more places which expose them to seisure to which one may adde that almost all the Religious and Communities have their Generals resident at Rome who will never permit that the Divines of their Orders should undertake to teach things which would not be well receiv'd there and from which there may lie a grudge against the whole Order They are therefore Private persons onely who are fit upon these encounters to engage for the Truth but then it is necessary that they be furnished with Light to know it with Zeal to love it with Steadiness not to fear the ills it may produce and with Sincerity and Disinterest that so they may have no occasion to be in danger of being thwarted And when there were onely this last how rare a thing it is to be found Well therefore has Iohn Major that renowned Doctor of Paris long since observ'd That it was not to be wonder'd at if they were fewer who declared for a Council then for the Pope since Councils met but seldom and gave no Benefices whereas the Pope does and thence 't is saies he men flatter him with an omnipotent power as well in Spiritual things as temporal Hinc homines ei blandiuntur dicentes quòd solvere potest omnia quadrare rotundata rotundare quadrata tam in Spiritualibus quà m in temporalibus Hence it proceeds that the Liberties of the Gallican Church and the ancient Maxims of the Sorbon are now-a-daies hardly vindicated but by secular persons such as We that have less relation to the Court of Rome then Ecclesiasticks have whereof the wisest of them are rather satisfied to approve them in their heart without defending them in their Books such power have fear and interest upon the spirit of those who should be more free from them by the Sanctity of their Profession But if there be persons disinterested so as not to be touch'd by these temporal considerations it often falls out that having little judgment and less science their Piety it self engages them into these new Opinions because they are publish'd in the World under this artificial veil That 't is forsooth to violate and wound Religion to contest the Pope's Infallibility and temporal Sovereignty over Kings Those in the mean time who have no relation to it but this pretext without any mixture of humane interest may easily be disabus'd if once they but consider that the most pious of all our ancient Doctors as the illustrious Gerson wihtout mentioning Dionysius the Carthusian and the blessed Cardinal d' Arles have oppos'd with greater vigour those ambitious pretences of the Court of Rome and that they have judg'd that on the contrary 't is the sincere Zeal for the Catholick Religion which ought to oblige all judicious Divines courageously to resist this temporal Superiority over Kings and Infallibility as two inseperable Maxims one from the other either of them capable to raise very great mischiefs to the Church For in effect what is there more opposite to the real benefit of the Catholick Religion then this Doctrine of the Pope's Superiority over Kings in Temporals which is a necessary consequence of Infallibility and of the power which they give him to depose them Is not this to render Religion abhorr'd and suspected of all Princes as the Sorbon has judiciously remark'd in the Censure of Santarel to give them cause to believe that 't is impossible they should have Subjects at the same time good Catholicks and faithful to their King What Infidel Prince indeed would permit men to preach Faith in the Countries under his obedience if he knew that all those who embrace it think themselves by that dispens'd with for obedience to him farther then another Sovereign pleases who can at any time cause them to take up arms against their lawful King Were this for example a proper expedient to incline the Americans to receive our Faith to say to them as some Spaniards did that the Pope had bestow'd their Country on the King of Castile And however Barbarians as they were had they not reason to reply as they did That they knew no such thing as a Pope but that if there were he must needs be a wicked man to give away that which was none of his own Were not this also to dispose Heretical Princes not to suffer Catholicks in their States when they shall behold them but as so many subjects to another Prince who has power to command them to depose him in the Country where they live And do not we know that 't is this has so imbitter'd the King of England against the Papists and the almost sole cause of the disturbance which they suffered in Iames's time as being to this day the greatest obstacle to the progress of Religion in that Kingdom In fine what Catholick Prince would be willing that his Dominion which he takes so much pains to preserve both in Peace and War should continually depend upon the judgment of one sole Person who may be possess'd perhaps by his Enemies or transported by his proper passions For 't is a weak confidence to resolve they will give the Pope no occasion
Feudataries to the holy See and how difficult it would be to wrest it out of these Harpyes talons had they power equal to their will or to the Right they have so insolently forg'd The King of England says Bellarmine is a Vassal to the Bishop of Rome ratione directi dominii What can be more directly said to prove what I assert Nay and as a learned Prelate of ours well observes Masconius transferrs the Title of Fidei Defensor to the Pope also though 't is well known our Princes have a right of more antiquity to it then any Pope's donation and that jure Coronae as were easie to evince though we admitted Leo the Xth to have prophesied that year as his brother Caiaphas had done before him But this is fortified say they by the authority of the Canonists Decretals and what is yet more formidable then all this by the subjects and properties of a new Obediential Vow of an whole Order of King-killers Let us produce a specimen or two to shew with what Secrecy and Religion they proceed The Jesuite Binet told Casaubon at Paris that 't were better all the Kings in Christendom were kill'd then that a Confession should be reveal'd in which the life of a Prince might be concern'd and Emanuel Sà that the Confessor potest jurare se nihil scire may swear and lie too whatever he heard rather then detect the Villany of such a Traitor Eodémque modo potest penitus jurare se nihil tale dixisse c. And upon this it is that Bellarmine celebrates our Garnet for his laudable Obstinacy though the less-perverted Monks of the other Orders have made no scruple to reveal the Treason and prosecute the Traitors to the Gallows I tremble almost to repeat the Instance but 't is his Majestie 's Grandfather of Glorious Memory who affirms it of them That there was not long since a French Jesuite so impudent as to assert That if our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ himself were now conversant on Earth passible and obnoxious to death should any man confess to him that he design'd to murther him he would suffer Jesus Christ to be kill'd rather then reveal the Confession To this Perron's Reply is so impertinent and superficial as one would even blush to see how he shuffles it over The Confessor says he needs not reveal the manner of his Treason 't is enough he give the King warning to take heed of himself So 't is reported did the Augurs to the great Caesar but it prevented not one Stab of the two and thirty nor did their Garnet so much as this nor any one of those reverend Fathers that ever I could learn But let us have a tast of their Politicks Caeso Rege ingens sibi nomen fecit says one of Henry the Third's Murtherer and Emanuel Sà Clerici Rebellio in Regem non est crimen laesae majestatis quia non est Subditus regi The Rebellion of a Church-man against his Prince is no such thing as Treason for he is none of his Subjects An excellent argument to make Kings in love with Jesuites But this is not all Summus Pontifex says Bellarmine Clericos exemit à subjectione Principum plainly Non sunt ampliùs Reges Clericorum superiores Kings are no more their superiors so that upon the matter how many Priests and Jesuites in a State so many Kings and Emperors Who art thou speaking to Princes that judgest another man's servant Domino suo stat aut cadit says the Cardinal And Santarel goes farther yet Papa sine Concilio the Pope does in spite of a Council depose an Emperor quia Papa Christi unum est tribunal they are Collegues in Office but which is more then Bozius it seems allows who speaking in the person of Popes alone says Per me Reges By me Kings reing he may remove them yea and mulct them too with death not for Heresie onely but if they so much as favour it I cannot affirm that all our Roman Catholicks are of this Belief but then I can hardly call them Roman Catholicks indeed my Lord they are not through-pac'd We see how Barclay Watson Widdrington Sheldon Bekinsaw and others have been censur'd hated and reproch'd for maintaining the contrary as of old the more loyal Sorbonists now sinking under this prodigious Tyranny to their everlasting reproch as well as prejudice of the poor Jansenists who with the Church of England are the onely Confessors amongst all the Christian Professors now extant that I could ever reade of or discover And though one might instance in some few honest Papists who were in times past of this Opinion too yet when I seriously reflect how many are now-a-daies devoted to the Jesuite I am amaz'd to consider to what disloyal temptations they are expos'd even by their very Institution Indeed Cardinal Perron denounces severely against any who shall dare to perpetrate the Crimes but in the same breath he ingenuously tells us that he means it whilst they are Kings since being once Excommunicated they are no more so but become Plebeians or but Wild beasts rather made to be taken and destroy'd and therefore that their new Saint Clement who murthered Henry the Third did not kill the King because he was depos'd Which Lesson was well took forth in our late Holy Warr at home when they were by no means to kill the KING forsooth but to shoot at CHARLES STUART For thus have all the malicious Topics and devilish Arguments been made use of by our late Fanatics as if this Cardinal had inspir'd them witness what they borrow of him from the Prophet Abias's deposing Roboam as they call it Azarias's outing Ozias c. Bellarmin affirms that Kings are not only subject to Popes but even to the most inferior Deacons We have a Pack My Lord amongst us that would think themselves much injur'd to be call'd Jesuites yet speaking of the Consistorian Discipline and power of Eldership are bold to say Non hic excipitur Episcopus aut Imperator to omit the famous T. C. and the many others I could bring on the Stage suffragans of this Doctrine had we no worse experience of it But it is not their Passion for God but for the World which makes these men defend their Interest by such pernicious Consequences Adde to these the Crue of Anabaptists and those other truculent Champions of the Fifth Monarchy who have improv'd their Principles to that notorious height and danger that God forbid their Dominion should ever be founded in his Majestie 's Grace For let us but examine what they Teach and what they have practis'd from that infallible Dictator in S. Peter's Chair to the meanest Sectarian their Writings and their Actions from Knipperdolling to Venner from Pope Hildebrand to Pope Henderson are sufficiently instructive what Princes are to expect One would think the divine right of Kings as Superiors Obedience to Governors Relative duty of
has most ingenuously acknowledged And how indeed can that Party exclaim against his Majestie or his Laws accusing the Regulars as the persons culpable and the Seculars as the persons accidentally and for their sakes onely obnoxious and punish'd whose demerits were the cause It is for these therefore my Lord I would sooner plead for mercy and in earnest I wish it might consist with the Wisdom of the Legislative power to state a difference between them But we have already described the Expedient Let them first renounce their dangerous Opinions by some such publick irreversible and authentick Act as may totally cancel the just presumption which lies at their doors and at once remove that intolerable scandal which the World does universally charge them withall and which even one of their own acknowledges to be their due after a thousand notorious Examples Proprium esse Ecclesiae odisse Caesares That Popes have even a natural Antipathy to Kings It is the Reverse my Lord of these Doctrines and of all those fatal Images of Jesuitical Disloyalty for which the Church of England alone will have the honour to be deservedly celebrated to Posterity And if his Majestie do not love and cherish her above all the Churches and Professions under Heaven a Church which has so constantly maintained a Truth so ancient so pure and so obliging to Kings even in the sense and interpretation of her very Adversaries who have the least grain of true Illumination and ingenuity the Miracle of His and Her stupendious Restauration will rise up in Judgment against us But He has already done it to his eternal renown and I have no more to adde but that God Almighty would still maintain what he has so signally wrought amongst us And for those heroick Assertors of what not onely concerns the French Kings but indeed all the Crown'd Heads of Christendome besides mine Option and Augure is That as God gave Aegypt to the King of Babylon for his hire and reward in having chastiz'd those wicked Nations he was angry with so it may please him to give these sincere Defenders of Jansenius and other Truths in opposition to the Errors of the Roman Court the Light in fine of his divine Truth and to emerge out of that Aegyptian Darkness in which the rest are so miserably involv'd These with my Prayers for your Lordship 's consummate Felicity are the Votes of My Lord Your Honour's most obedient and most obliged servant THE PERNICIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF THE New HERESIE of the IESUITES AGAINST The KING and the STATE Advice to the Reader THis Treatise being written two years since and several Copies thereof dispers'd among divers persons of Condition it was deemed the conjuncture of the present Affairs might render the Publication of it necessary for the benefit both of the Church and the State But it is thought fit to advertise that the Author of this Piece having made use in it of some Memoires concerning Infallibility which he had before prepar'd these Notes happening to fall into the hands of a person of small Iudgment he caused them to be printed under the Title of A Defence of the Liberties of the Gallican Church c. adding of himself a great many impertinent and indiscreet particulars which have exceedingly disfigur'd these Memoires IT does not suffice that our Divines have represented to the Church the Exorbitances of the New Heresie of the Iesuites in what concerns Religion and the honour of God to whom they would equal a mortal man by a most sacrilegious impiety the faithful servants of the King find themselves oblig'd likewise to elevate their voices and to represent those pernicious Consequences as to what regards the safety of his Sacred Person and the good of his Estate The Apostle S. Peter establishes for the two principal parts of Piety the Fear of God and the Honour which is due to Kings Deum timete Regem honorificate If these Divines have satisfied the first of these obligations by the just aversion they have stirr'd up in all pious persons to the pernicious adulation of the Iesuites which they have discover'd to be no less then a kind of Idolatry it were but reasonable that others should satisfie the second by inspiring all those who bear any love or affection to their King with the horrour which they ought to have of a Doctrine which may prove to funest to his Person and is in danger of ravishing from him the most august and supreme Quality that he has receiv'd from God which is to depend on him alone in Temporals and to be independent of all other Powers upon the face of the Earth True it is that his Majesty has already been advertis'd of it and has clearly perceiv'd by that light and vivacity of spirit which all Europe admires in a Prince so young of what pernicious Consequence this novel Doctrine was which they would introduce into his State and the advantage which they might take to establish their pretensions who design nothing more then to reach the Heads of Kings and even subject them in Temporals It were fit therefore that all the world knew as much that those who are not sensibly touch'd with the prospect of an Error so prejudicial to Religion as falsly imagining it to concern the Divines onely may at least be affected with the consideration of the prejudice which it may bring to the State and to the sacred and inviolable rights of the Crowns of our Kings But since the address which has been made use of by the Partisans of those corrupt Opinions has been to infuse it into the minds of the people masked under the vizor of Religion and respect to the Pope and to decry the opposers of it as enemies to the holy See it is necessary we should defeat their artifice by discovering it to the world and by teaching them to distinguish as our fathers have done before us the Apostolical See from the Court Politick of Rome which are things totally different For that which we are to understand by the Apostolical Seat is that Spiritual Authority of the Head of the Church which Iesus Christ gave to S. Peter residing in the Pope and which all Christians are oblig'd to acknowledge and reverence by an inseparable union with it as the very center of the Communion of the Church But the Court Politick of Rome is nothing else but that Swarm of Courtiers who are about the Pope's person to advance their fortunes and thrust themselves into Church-Dignities and the person of Popes consider'd not as Popes but as Men who being as obnoxious as others to their Ambition and other humane passions suffer themselves to be often transported by the adulation of their Courtiers to attribute to themselves without reason Rights and Prerogatives which God never gave them and that are equally prejudicial to the Sovereignty of Kings the repose of the People the tranquillity of the Church the good of the Catholick Religion and in fine to the true
which they made believe they would keep them and maugre these groundless exceptions carry their corrupt principles to all their natural consequences So as there is nothing able to oppose the funest effects of this Doctrine which subjects Kings to a forein Power whiles they permit this double Infallibility of Fact and Right to subsist from which 't is impossible to divorce it I very well know that there are some who seek several pretexts to charm the vigilance of Kings and their Ministers that so they may not perceive how this Doctrine of Infallibility is prejudicial to States One of these Pretences is the affirming that this Infallibility relates to Faith and Doctrine onely which are things Spiritual and that have nothing of common with the Temporals of Kings and the rights of their Crowns But there is nothing more unreasonable then this adulterate Colour For 't is true that indeed this temporal is not of Faith it self nor is the Doctrine the immediate Object of Infallibility But one cannot without Heresie deny that it may not be the subject and matter of Faith since 't is an Article of Faith establish'd both by Gospel and the Apostles that we ought to pay Tribute to Caesar which is a temporal thing and that we owe Obedience to Temporal Princes not onely to escape the punishment which they may inflict on us if we transgress but because we are in Conscience also oblig'd to it Non solùm propter iram sed etiam propter Conscientiam So as to persuade Kings that their Temporal is so far remote from Faith that it can be no matter of Faith is to dissolve and break the most sacred bond which unites their Subjects to their Empire to wit that of Conscience and Religion Faith is in it self a thing intirely spiritual and divine but that does no way hinder things humane and temporal from being very often both the subject and matter of it Warre is a secular thing yet 't is matter of Faith to know whether a Christian Prince may make warre And the Anabaptists erre in matter of Faith when they maintain that it is unlawful The power which Magistrates have to put Malefactors to death is a temporal thing and yet it belongs to Faith to decide whether Iesus Chirst has left this power to Christians or no and the same Anabaptists who deny it are esteem'd Hereticks by the Church Usury is a temporal thing yet is it matter of Faith to resolve whether or no it be a sin In like manner the Power of Kings is temporal but it concerns Faith to determine whether the power of the Keyes which Iesus Christ has given to S. Peter does extend to the breaking of that Obligation and Tie which Subjects have to their Sovereign by absolving them from their Oaths of Allegiance It concerns the interpretation of the words of I. Christ and by consequent has relation to Faith It imports the extent of the power that Iesus Christ has given the Pope as his Vicar which we can know nothing of but by divine revelation preserv'd in the Scriptures and by Tradition and by consequence it is matter of Faith It is no way then to be doubted but the Question whether the Pope have any right to punish Princes with temporal pains and to devest them of their States by virtue of that Authority pretended to be given to S. Peter is no concernment of Faith and therefore 't is in earnest a mere mockery to persuade Kings that the Pope's Infallibility does not extend to them whenas in truth there are none whom it so nearly concerns as they since Popes having so often decided this Right to be theirs if once the people be suffered to hold them infallible as to what they determin touching Faith none can hinder them from acknowledging also that they do not erre in their explication of the words of the Gospel touching the Primacy of S. Peter as of an Empire and Monarchy which extends it self even over the Temporals of Kings But besides this the question is not of what the thing is in truth but what 't is in the opinion of the Iesuites and that the strive to infuse into the World seeing from thence it is the ill effects proceed which this unlucky Doctrine may produce Errour and Superstition being infinitely more capable then either Truth or Religion to engage an abus'd people to Insurrections and disorders more nefarious Now the Iesuites as we have already seen maintain that this Infallibility of the Pope reaches even to the making their Sovereignty over Princes an Article of Faith It is of Faith say Bellarmine and Lessius that the Pope may depose Kings because Pope Gregory the VIIth has decided it and that the Decision of a Pope is a point of Faith It were to take away all humane Reason to hinder men from thus arguing and by consequent to sleep on the point of a Precipice to suffer the Doctrine of Infallibility to creep into a State from whence it is impossible but the other must needs spring For having once permitted the people to be season'd with this Opinion and that they are but accustom'd to receive all that Popes pretend in their Bulls as well concerning matters of Right as of Fact as if Iesus Christ himself had pronounc'd it if a Pope please to apply the Infallibility acknowledg'd to be in him for the determining as they have frequently done that by virtue of the power which Iesus Christ has given him to bind and loose whatsoever is on Earth he has power to depose Kings and absolve their Subjects from their Fidelity and that such a King merits to be depos'd it is not to be thought 't will prove so easie a matter to defend ones self from these Fulminations by altering the minds of the people in a moment and persuading them that he whom they took to be then so infallible is now no such thing or is not at least in that matter that is to say that he is infallible when what he affirms does not concern us but ceases to be so when it imports us he should not be so This were to make an ill estimate of the mindes of men and of the force which custome has over them to suffer one's self to be dazzled with these vain confidences Those Opinions which do by little and little establish their authority in the minds of men are weak and tender in their infancy and beginning nor is it then so difficult a matter to extirpate them but when once time has rooted and confirm'd them they get dominion of Reason and discover a tyrannous look against which it dares not so much as lift up its eyes Capable they are to precipitate it into all manner of excess and make men violate the rules of very Nature and the most sacred obligations of civil Society especially when they happen to be Opinions which possess the spirit by the way of Religion For men being once persuaded and with reason that they